Monday, July 16, 2007

Because I like it when people agree with me

Over at the Wages of Wins, the authors evaluate the 1993 draft and end up agreeing with me-- Shawn Bradley was not as big a bust as you think!

Using their "Win" metrics, DJ writes that:

The player chosen in between Webber and Hardaway was Bradley. Bradley has generally been though of as a bust. But in 12 seasons he managed to produce 50.9 wins, which is the 5th best mark in this draft class. His WP48 of 0.125 ranks 6th, which tells us that had decision-makers had a crystal ball in 1993 (and used Wins Produced to evaluate talent), Bradley would have still been a lottery pick.

Based on this evaluation, the best per minute players from the 1993 draft were Chris Webber, Anfernee Hardaway, Ervin Johnson, Sam Cassell, George Lynch, Shawn Bradley, and Scott Burrell. This draft was an admittedly weak one: the average WP48 for NBA players is 1.00--basically meaning that if you played a team of people with WP48 of 1.00, then your team would end up with a 41-41 record--and these six players are the only six players from the 1993 draft that qualify as average or better. However, you can only draft the people that are available, and by this measure Shawn Bradley really doesn't look like that bad a pick.

Also, in case you managed to miss his name in that list of players, I just want to give a big shout out to one of my favorite players of all time-- George Lynch. Nice to see him getting some recognition from someone other than me!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I am willing to agree that Bradley gets dumped on more than he deserves if you are willing to agree that a player drafted that highly is expected to be a major impact player. If I had a crystal ball and an ear in the 76ers front office I would have traded away the pick for a package to help build the team in the long run.

Sam Cohen said...

I agree that the expectation is that a top three pick should be a major impact player, but I also think history proves that this expectation is too optimistic. I'll try and post on this tomorrow.